The construction and home improvement arts frequently need custom colored sealants for the improved aesthetic appearance of a wide array of projects. Common substrates where precisely color-matched caulks are needed and desired include: painted surfaces, stained surfaces, counter tops, wall paper, pre-colored siding materials, brick, stone, tile, bath and kitchen fixtures, flooring, etc. While some factory-tinted, non-custom colored caulks are available in the trade (with white being the overwhelmingly dominant color), most such colors of caulk do not match the substrates they are applied to very well.
At least one company has provided custom color-matching of individual containers of caulk. However, the custom color-matching has only been done by the company itself and only at its factory. Accordingly, such a custom-coloring service only works when: 1) the consumer or contractor is willing or able to wait several days or weeks for color submittals and then delivery from the factory; 2) the consumer is willing to purchase a relatively large volume of custom-colored caulk; and 3) the consumer is willing to pay a very high price for such factory-made custom colors of caulk.
Consumers and contractors have not been able to conveniently custom tint individual containers of sealant themselves, at a project site. In particular, the long-standing and unmet need in the market has centered around the ability to: custom tint only one or two cartridges or squeeze tubes of sealant at a time; acquire custom tinted sealant at a low-to-moderate cost; custom tint sealant without the need for special or expensive mixing or dispensing equipment; and custom tint sealant without waiting for extended periods of time. To date, these aggregate criteria have been heretofore unavailable.
Some of the key difficulties that have prevented the resolution of such problems in the prior art have centered on several issues. For example, the high viscosity of typical sealant products has made it very difficult or impossible to easily and uniformly mix liquid or dry colorants throughout the sealant. In contrast with this problem, adding and mixing liquid or dry colorants into products with lower viscosities, such as latex paint, has been relatively easy. The basic elongated geometry of standard sealant containers, which produces a high aspect-ratio container, presents another difficulty to overcome. Colorants that are introduced into one end of such elongated containers are difficult to uniformly distribute throughout the entire length of the containers.
Attempts to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art, have included the use of supplemental mechanical mixing equipment or specialized static mixers to provide the necessary mixing action and/or energy. Such equipment has included: mechanical mixing bowls; commercial mechanical paint shakers; special holding adapters for mechanical paint shakers; bladed mixing devices that are rammed back-and-forth within sealant containers; static mixers that lead to high pressure drops during dispensing (making colorant dispensing difficult, unless special, expensive, hard-to-find, high mechanical leverage caulking guns are used), etc.
Several approaches have either been proposed or commercially attempted previously to allegedly allow for an easy, fast, convenient, and inexpensive method for the custom-coloring of individual containers of caulk at or near the location in the field where the caulk is to be used. While some of the approaches taken have delivered a low level of partial success at in-the-field custom coloring of caulk in individual rigid caulk cartridges, none have provided the needed case of mixing and dispensing, economy, freedom from needing special mechanical mixing equipment, and speed of mixing that the market desires and needs. Moreover, none of the prior attempts have made it possible to custom tint individual flexible squeeze tubes of caulk in the field; leaving a great unmet need in the art.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0099153 to Renfro describes a system that requires the consumer or contractor to remove the slidable plunger from the rearward end of a rigid caulk cartridge in order to first place liquid pigments or a paint into the rear of the container and then insert an expensive, special bladed mixing device into the container. The bladed mixer must then be rammed back and forth inside the cartridge to mix the contents. Such an approach requires the use of the specialized bladed mixing device that might only be used once. In addition, it is impossible to use such a device without depositing a significant amount of messy caulk on the mixer's blades and shaft, which then must be cleaned, with lost caulk and lost time being the result. Moreover, it is difficult and tedious with such a device to obtain a uniform color throughout the entire length of the caulk cartridge since the user is forced to attempt to mix a liquid pigment or paint directly into a very thick and pasty latex caulk. In addition, the repeated cycling of the bladed mixer through the thick caulk causes the formation of a significant number air bubbles in the caulk. Unfortunately, there is no proposed method for removing the entrained air from the caulk. Such entrained air significantly increases the occurrence of spattered caulk and gaps in the applied caulk bead as the user dispenses the caulk. Moreover and very importantly, this approach is completely unsuited for custom-coloring caulk in flexible squeeze tubes since this approach requires that the cartridge body side walls be rigid and that the user have full access to the full diameter of the container, which is not possible with a heat-sealed squeeze tube. U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2004/0173640 and 2007/0242558 to Brandon describe systems very similar to that of Renfro, with all of the same limitations and difficulties.
In another example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0151531 to Tikusis describes a system that uses a special rigid caulk cartridge that has two separate chambers within the overall package, with one chamber coming pre-loaded from the factory with pre-thickened base caulk material and the other chamber provided empty so that the custom coloring agent (paint, stain or liquid pigment) can be injected into this chamber by the user just before application of the caulk. While the method described, which uses a syringe to inject the coloring agent into the empty chamber, appears to be practical, in practice it can be very messy. While mixing is not done inside the special two-chambered cartridge itself, the mixing that occurs in the affixed static mixer nozzle, as both chambers are simultaneously emptied during the dispense cycle, creates back pressure that makes dispensing very difficult, especially when a person uses a common caulking gun that nearly always provides very poor mechanical leverage, as opposed to uncommon, expensive, specialized guns with high mechanical leverage. In addition, because of the highly specialized packaging and metering equipment required, the cost of the system is very high and makes it unaffordable to many who might otherwise use it. Moreover, this approach also does not and cannot allow for the use of flexible squeeze tubes, thus, greatly limiting its usefulness.
In a further example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,302,575 and U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2002/0036952 and 2002/0065353, all to Anderson et al., describe a system wherein a somewhat lower than normal viscosity caulk-forming composition is thickened by contact with a pigmented composition while the combined materials are shaken on a commercial mechanical paint shaker, reportedly yielding a custom colored, thickened caulk product. A somewhat similar approach was described within U.S. Pat. No. 4,090,612 to Lostutter, except that the base caulk material is provided initially at the typical high viscosity of common caulks. The Anderson approach involves the caulk-forming composition becoming thickened upon contact with the pigmented composition, as intense, high-energy shaking occurs on a commercial mechanical paint shaker. If a caulk-forming composition begins to thicken when contacted by a pigmented composition, it is easy to see that it would typically require the power delivered by a high-energy, commercial mechanical paint shaker to accomplish complete and uniform mixing of the pigment throughout the caulk-forming composition to get a uniform final color, especially when it is understood that by adding pigment at one end of a long, narrow, high aspect-ratio, rigid caulk cartridge it becomes quite difficult to easily and uniformly get the pigment to traverse the entire length of the cartridge in a homogeneous fashion. The Anderson, et al, approach stipulates the viscosity of the un-tinted caulk-forming composition to be in the range of 600,000 to 800,000 centipoise, which is too high to allow easy hand mixing to homogeneity of liquid or dry colorants in a caulk base. Neither of these approaches makes it feasible for a consumer or contractor to readily and quickly custom color individual rigid caulk cartridges at a job site or in their own home without the proposed expensive and cumbersome mechanical shaking devices. Moreover, neither the Anderson nor Lostutter approach makes it possible to use flexible squeeze tubes.
Accordingly, it can be seen that there exists a need for a very simple, convenient, and economical system for custom coloring individual rigid cartridges and individual flexible squeeze tubes of caulk that does not require expensive mechanical mixing equipment, specialized, high mechanical-leverage caulking guns, and also allows for the very easy dispensing of the caulk itself, with or without caulking guns, once the custom color has been achieved.